Can we please all pretend I didn't just do that?
Well, I think my favourite part of Fifty Shades of Grey is the bit where he puts the used condom in his pocket. Yep. That totally didn't make me bodily recoil from the computer or anything.
In my defense, I downloaded the thing to fact-check (people on Tumblr were making up "quotes" from the books, and I wanted to check what was real and what wasn't), and this week has been so ridiculous at work that reading erotica at my desk in the lulls when I'm waiting for someone to get back to me on one of the six things I'm working on at once seemed like a reasonable idea. I do always like to criticise from a position of some knowledge on the topic, and I was curious as to whether it's really as bad as all that.
It is terribly, egregiously ordinary. The prose is pedestrian and the storytelling lazy and blah blah blah, but we all know that we'll put up with those things if the story grabs us. But if you don't identify with Anastasia (and since she does every single overwrought over-thinking woman-in-a-relationship thing that I never understand, I really, really didn't identify with her) then there's nothing for you. She falls violently in love with the mind-numbingly (literally) gorgeous Christian in the space of, oh, a fortnight, and there is no other story to the book. And the sex is perfect, and despite never having an urge to masturbate her libido is constant, but... Whatever. If it floats your boat, grand.
But (and I'll quote from my flailing chatdump to Jen here) there's this element that BDSM as a lifestyle/sexuality choice/proclivity is the result of abuse or psychological issues, and I am very, very frowny-face about that. I'm not sure if it's just that that's what Anastasia thinks at this point (and she has demonstrated numerous times that she's an idiot) or if it's something the author has as a story element, and Christian's going to be "saved" from this "unhealthy" lifestyle/mindset/whatever by true romance with Anastasia. And just... UGH.
In my defense, I downloaded the thing to fact-check (people on Tumblr were making up "quotes" from the books, and I wanted to check what was real and what wasn't), and this week has been so ridiculous at work that reading erotica at my desk in the lulls when I'm waiting for someone to get back to me on one of the six things I'm working on at once seemed like a reasonable idea. I do always like to criticise from a position of some knowledge on the topic, and I was curious as to whether it's really as bad as all that.
It is terribly, egregiously ordinary. The prose is pedestrian and the storytelling lazy and blah blah blah, but we all know that we'll put up with those things if the story grabs us. But if you don't identify with Anastasia (and since she does every single overwrought over-thinking woman-in-a-relationship thing that I never understand, I really, really didn't identify with her) then there's nothing for you. She falls violently in love with the mind-numbingly (literally) gorgeous Christian in the space of, oh, a fortnight, and there is no other story to the book. And the sex is perfect, and despite never having an urge to masturbate her libido is constant, but... Whatever. If it floats your boat, grand.
But (and I'll quote from my flailing chatdump to Jen here) there's this element that BDSM as a lifestyle/sexuality choice/proclivity is the result of abuse or psychological issues, and I am very, very frowny-face about that. I'm not sure if it's just that that's what Anastasia thinks at this point (and she has demonstrated numerous times that she's an idiot) or if it's something the author has as a story element, and Christian's going to be "saved" from this "unhealthy" lifestyle/mindset/whatever by true romance with Anastasia. And just... UGH.